


Let the sparks die out

by orphan_account



Series: chara's guide to actually kind of sorta being okay ft. everyone else [1]
Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: AU where mettaton neo can be spared, Angst, Body Sharing, Canon Divergence, Gen, Multiple Timelines, Neutral Route, POV Third Person, Post-No Mercy Route, chara protection squad 2k16, this will have a happy ending tho
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-31
Updated: 2016-03-24
Packaged: 2018-05-10 18:20:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 11,110
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5596114
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It turns out that becoming the out-of-batteries shell of a killer robot collapsed in the abandoned town of Snowdin might have been the best decision Mettaton has ever made at all ever, even if at first it seems like he's sidetracked himself from the one thing he needs to do more than anything else: eradicate the human threatening to destroy <i>everything</i>.</p><p>Meanwhile, all Frisk wants is for Chara to stop telling weird death puns. Or to stop doing anything death-related at all, actually.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

They are there in front of him, their eyes hellish, and the silver of the knife gleams as it refracts stage light.

"My, my," Mettaton says. "So you've finally arrived. After our first meeting -"

"After our first meeting, you realized something ghastly, that I'm not just a threat to monsters, but to humanity as well," the child says. "Can we skip this whole spiel and just get to the point?"

Mettaton rolls backwards a bit, bewildered, but nonetheless carries on with the speech he's scripted in his head. "Come any closer, and I'll be forced to show you -"

"Your true form. I know."

Well. Alrighty, then.

The child approaches him, a bored expression on their face, casual, so casual. "Ready?" they say. _"It's showtime!_ Right?"

"Those are _my_ lines," Mettaton scoffs, and if boxes could pout, he would. But, they ask for a show, by god they're going to get one. One arm extends so he can reach his back, and he pats himself down until he finds the switch there. He flips it. Before _that_ transformation can begin, he presses the switch down so it clicks into him, into the compartment that rests, hidden, behind the EX position.

Legs, suddenly (very nice ones, might he add; he'll have to thank Alphys after he's pulverized this child to death and used their blood to create a new fragrance brand. He hears human blood is rich with things monsters have never even dreamed of. He's excited to test that out.) Something flowers from the palm of his right hand and envelopes it like a blossom, squirming and slithering over his arm and smoothing itself out until it's molded itself into a gun-esque device. His box-like body collapses and writhes in on itself until it's inside out; the mass of wires that his torso regurgitates rearranges itself, connecting and pulling apart and twisting like worms, until they make the correct pattern for optimal functioning and melt down and sculpt into something sleek, black, gorgeous. A cloud of pink smoke puffs from the top, and by the time it clears, _voila,_ there's his head; shoulder blades sprout from where his new neck meets his new torso and shoot outwards; six spikes of blinding, theatrical light shine from the spotlights lining the underneath of them.

 _Ohh,_ he wishes he had a mirror on him.

He tries to raise his arm, the one with the plasma cannon. His smile immediately fades.

He can't move.

For the first time, the desire to do what he was created to do is inebriating him, guzzling him down like some hateful, fear-blazed flame. He can see the dust on their hands. He's been looking at it this whole time. His soul is burning.

And. He can't. _Move._

And the way the child's eyes catch the light, glaze over with a scarlet iridescence; it all seems familiar to him, somehow.

"Hey, don't look at me like that," they say, and Mettaton narrows his eye at them, because now that the performance has begun, they're not supposed to say that, they're supposed to lunge at him, dust-thirsted, merciless, just like they have everyone else, "I'm not here to slaughter you. I've already done it, like, a thousand times. Just let me through, okay? And I won't hurt you." They tilt their head to one side, and he feels something cold and void crackle inside his circuits. "I haven't killed _everyone_. You can sense it, can't you?"

He can. He feels prompted to comment on how they're holding back. That maybe humanity isn't as in danger as he feared.

"I've spared one other. He's in Snowdin." Something oily and feverish curls across their irises like a tapeworm. "I want to see what happens, if it's just you two. I've tried many combinations, but not this one. I'm surprised you're showing me NEO at all. Most of the time, you don't do it unless I really kill everyone in my path. You must be getting more and more vengeful, like, subconsciously or something, every time we reset."

They take a step forward; white stage lights over-saturate the blues and purples on their sweater.

It clicks. Why he can't move.

As any true fan would know, of course, he was built as a human eradication robot; his NEO form is the pinnacle of these abilities. Energy fizzes inside the plasma cannon, blood-thirsty and awaiting the command for discharge, and he feels the power Alphys has installed in him bursting like fireworks every time he shifts where he stands. The sight that takes up half his face has vowed not to let him waste any battery power until it has locked onto its target. It never finds anything.

His machinery does not identify the child in front of him as human.

"Oh, why would you look at this,"the creature says. "The robot's finally figured it out!" They laugh, and it's this warped, red, distorted sound. "All it would take for me to kill you is one hit. It's 'cause Alphys was so focused on building up your attack that she didn't really care about your defense. Because all it would take for _you_ to take me out is one hit, too. Of course, you never ever get the chance. _Frisk_ is human. This body is human. I am not."

Frisk. Something in his memory stirs awake, but he cannot discern it.

Their hand glows orange, and they drift closer to him still. "Here you go," they say. Tendrils of orange light burst forth from the child's palm, and they brush across Mettaton's torso, wind around him, and Mettaton grimaces, not knowing what to expect as the seed of a feeling plants itself in his core and flows outward from there, stretching across his machinery, into his soul; it feels so _good,_ like if the taste of sugar could be turned into a sensation, and it's warm, and it burns through him like liquefied compassion.

But there's something off about it, too. He can tell that the feeling had hesitated to leave the creature's hand.

"There," they say, "you're spared." They pat his side (it's all they can reach), then walk past him, and he's still frozen, and every part of him _screams_ not to let them go, because he can't, he can't fail this, he has to make sure humanity is safe, has to make sure Asgore never gets the chance to take their soul, he  _has_ to, has to...

Part of him knows that, really, this is Alphys' fault; not being able to move until you've honed in on your target is a _horrible_ thing to program into your so-called greatest invention.

The other part of him blames it on himself. He doesn't even have any basis for it. He just does.

The creature is out of sight now, and just when he thinks they're gone, he hears their voice say, "Oh, and, because nothing interesting will ever happen if I just leave you standing here until your batteries run out or whatever...Here, uh, turns out there were definitely knives in the kitchen — took me a few times to find them, but y'know — so _here's_ your human flesh to destroy. Uninhabited by me, this time."

There's a wet sound like cutting through steak with a knife.

It isn't much; the creature doesn't want to bleed to death, after all, he's sure. But it's enough. The sight on his face locks in, beeps, and he's eradicating human DNA before he even registers he's doing it. Yellow magic surges from his plasma cannon and blasts into the sample of flesh that's been placed in front of him; it sizzles, vaporizes, and leaves a distorted gas in the air, similar to heat off asphalt.

He stares, eye wild, at the black, chalky smudge on the floor. He flexes his arms, wiggles the one set of fingers he has. Voluntary movements. He can move again.

Mettaton propels himself out the back door, and he scans his perimeter, but the creature is already gone.

 _Battery low,_ his machinery alerts him. He has to get back to Alphys' lab, but he doesn't know what he'll do after that.

He'll figure something out. He's a TV star. Improvising is kind of, like, his thing.


	2. Chapter 2

_I don't think that was necessary. My arm really, really hurts._

"Shut up, you pansy," Chara replies, pressing the palm of their hand (though it's not really theirs, now is it) to the wound to try and suppress the bleeding. It stings, but they've had worse. "If I didn't do that, he was gonna just sit there and die and do nothing. Which would have been boring."

_He wouldn't have died. He would have just run out of batteries. And I still think that you could have just thrown him some hair or something. It's the same human DNA, right?_

"I dunno, maybe hair would have worked. But it wouldn't have been proper; that guy's all about dramatics. Knifing off a chunk of your flesh was totally the way to go."

Frisk shudders, and it feels like a white-hot patch in the back of Chara's chest, soft at the edges. Everything about them is so soft.

"Alright," Chara says, twirling the knife in between their fingers like a baton and rising from where they'd hidden from Mettaton, tucked away into the shadows behind one of the power generators. "Enough about that stupid robot. Let's get to that elevator at the end of the hallway now, yeah?"

_He's not a stupid robot. He's my friend._

"Not in this timeline, he's not."

_He's my friend. Just not yours._

Chara feels bile rise in the back of their throat, and the stomach acid burns, and they swallow it down. "Whatever," they say, "let's just go."

They take a step forward, and feel a familiar pull tangle inside their legs and tighten. "Frisk," they grit out, and they bring another foot forward but it lags, struggling against them, "this is my body now, you _know_ that, cut it out." There's a fight going on inside their calves now, a fizzling, pathetic game of tug-of-war that they're able to sever in the end; they regain control of their legs and breeze forward, sifting out the remnants of Frisk's rebellion and thumping one fist to the open flesh on their arm just to spite them so they'll both feel the sharp, infernal pain rocket through the body.

 _Do we_ have _to go to Asgore right now?_ Frisk asks.

"Where else would we go?"

_We could head back to the MTT Resort. I could really go for one of those, um, starfaits._

"Really?" Chara asks incredulously. "That stuff doesn't even taste good. 'Made of sparkling stars' my ass. A starfait is probably just, like, mercury and flakes of glitter mixed together. I don't know how we can eat one and gain HP instead of lose some."

_...Please?_

Chara rolls their eyes. "You just want to go back because you're hoping Mettaton will find us and kill me."

_No!_

"And you also want to stall for time because you're hoping you can get me to change my mind about wanting to kill people before we reset again so you can do your stupid pacifist route."

_No!!_

"We share a body, Frisk. You can't hide stuff from me."

Frisk sulks in the back of their head like a whirlpool of steam.

"God, you know what, fine," Chara says. "Asgore's not going anywhere. I'll humor you."

* * *

 

 

Being on low battery sucks. Immensely. Vision is blurred, machinery whines worse than nails on a chalkboard every other second, each movement is delayed; he'll tell his leg to move and it will only do so a few moments later, and his innards whir with the effort that even that simple operation takes. He'd already tried flipping himself back into the most energy-conserving of his three forms, but, alas, the switch is lodged into his back with no room to pull it back out. Yet another design flaw on Alphys' part. And yet another reason why he needs to be in her lab five minutes ago.

" _Alphys!"_ Mettaton yells, banging his fist on the laboratory door. "Open up!"

Alphys never opens up. Mettaton crosses his arms and waits, plumes of heat and humidity billowing into him as he does, but Alphys never opens up.

Then he notices the note on the door.

_Mettaton,_

_I already know why you're here. Sorry I was never able to patch up the energy consumption rates on your two other forms. There's a storage compartment I built in your thigh. Check in there._

_-Alphys_

"Or, you _could_ just open up and _fix_ the energy consumption rates for me," Mettaton mutters to himself, but pats down his legs until his hand stumbles on a metal tab. He sidles his thumb underneath it and pushes up, and a sector of the casing on his thigh lifts up, revealing a small chamber in his leg. Cached inside it is a black rope of something, and when his eye lands on the plug at the end, his circuits usher a chill of relief through him.

He walks the lab's outer walls until he comes across the pair of sockets that he knows is in the back, and he slumps against the wall, slides down it and, after feeling himself up for the port, plugs one end of the cord into the back of his neck and the other into the wall. The socket feeds his neck with electricity that bleeds and pulses into the rest of him, like a heart would with blood, if he had one.

When he's fully charged, and energy is twining through him in a circulated current, Mettaton rips the cord from his neck, from the wall. He coils it up and stores it back into his leg.

Asgore's castle. They're going to Asgore's castle; he knows that. The most logical thing would be to follow them there, right now. But what plot line has ever gained anything from being boring and predictable?

If he follows them, it won't make any difference. They aren't going to humanize in the time it takes him to catch up to them. His machinery isn't going to magically upgrade itself. If he follows them, he'll be met with the same results he was a short while ago.

What he _needs_ is someone's help. A co-star, if you will.

Alphys doesn't seem to be around right now, which leaves one other obvious option.

Snowdin, they'd said, right?

* * *

 

 

Chara spews the fluid so it showers in a sparkling, multi-hued drizzle to the floor.

"Disgusting," they reaffirm.

 _It's not_ that _bad,_ Frisk says.

Burgerpants glances at the sludge on the floor. His eye twitches.

* * *

 

 

There's snow caked in between his heels and the bottoms of his shoes and there's frozen vapor frosting his insides and his internal thermometer reads thirty -3 degrees Celsius and this was, overall, a terrible idea.

His battery is starting to drain (again), and between that and the moisture glazing his innards, clogging up digital workings, his exuberance is starting to fade from him again, steps wobbling, miscalculated, and if inherent elegance hadn't been built into him, he probably would have slipped in the snow several times by now.

He's _almost_ at Snowdin, though. If his battery can last him another five minutes, he'll be all right.

One step forward, with slow, sloppy movements rather than stylized grace in order to conserve battery power, another step forward, his optical functions going out, a high, thin screech screaming in a monotone in his head, and, oh, there goes the feeling in his right arm. He uses the left to pry the cord from his thigh, so he's prepared to charge himself the second he comes across an outlet.

There's a tiny, tinny _yap!_ from behind him.

Mettaton, on instinct, turns around.

A chubby white dog with fluffed fur and stumpy legs bores into him with its eyes. Its tongue lolls out over small, unintimidating teeth. Lovely. Mettaton continues forward.

The dog continues forward, too.

"Do you want something?" Mettaton asks.

The dog pants and waddles further through the snow, and Mettaton doesn't have time for this, so he ignores it, and Snowdin is in his sights now, the snow-capped buildings and veil of serenity.

He feels something warm and gooey envelope his hand.

"What in the -" The dog is there, except it's - it's not a _dog,_ really, as goop stretches from its side and makes a grab for Mettaton's hand, sucking on it like the suction of an octopus, and Mettaton grimaces and tries to shake it off but it's stuck there and it's really, really gross. Three seconds of trying to tug his arm away and three seconds of pulsating, suctioning dog slime later and the unwanted limb extension begins to loosen up, becoming more putty around his arm than melted marshmallow, and then it lets go entirely, retracting back into the dog's side and slurping itself up there. Mettaton wipes his arm on his chestplate, watches as the dog yaps at him one final time before just. Ascending. Until it's out of sight.

Mettaton makes a face at the cavities in the snow the dog had left and, _finally,_ begins to make his uninterrupted journey into Snowdin. Uninterrupted, of course, until he protectively clenches his fist around his charge cord and realizes that it's gone.

Realizes that that awful, awful little quadruped has absorbed the only godforsaken portable charger he had.

Mettaton takes in a deep, artificial breath, and tries hard not to scream. Screaming would sap up the little battery power he has left.

He makes it about five steps into the town and then there's the _vvrrrmmmm_ of a machine powering down.

* * *

 

 

"Well, well," Chara says, brushing their hands together so the dust rubs off and falls in a dry waterfall to the floor. "I guess you could say that this means another one bites the dust, huh?"

It turns out that it's a good thing they went back into the heart of Hotland. They'd missed someone.

 _P-please don't,_ Frisk says, and Chara laughs as there's a watered-down sting that pinpricks the front of their skull.

"C'mon, Frisk, I've _urned_ it."

Frisk doesn't reply to that one. They're crying, somehow. There's a wet, distressed patch of Chara's mind where they're lingering.

"Now let's get to Asgore's place and talk to - uh, what was it that Flowey had called him - Smiley Trashbag."

_Smiley Trashbag is my friend. And I don't want to go to Asgore's place._

"Yeah, well, tough shit, Frisk."

* * *

 

 

It's been...quiet, since the human arrived all that time ago. The cold, blue-gray that shrouds the town is, generally, an augment of the wintry holiday spirit. Now, it's. It's very sad. Without anyone here.

Not that Papyrus isn't overcoming the depressed atmosphere all on his own, of course. He's doing fine by himself. Very, very fine. The best he's ever been. Definitely fine, indefinitely.

Papyrus steps out into the cold, not that he'd know that it's cold considering the fact that that he has no skin, and mentally paves a path to his sentry station; abandoned town or not, he still has responsibilities to keep up with. And a human could trek through here at _any. Moment._

Another human, that is.

Hopefully one that doesn't have any, um, knife.

Well!

Anyways!

Papyrus starts walking towards the front of the town, boots depressing holes into the snow as he does, and finds that following the exact path that he had wanted to is difficult when there's someone, just, kind of. There. Collapsed in the snow.

"Er," Papyrus says, prodding the figure with his boot, "hello? Are you all right?"

They don't reply. They don't even move.

Papyrus examines them further, and he feels his breath hitch in the throat that he doesn't have. It's a _robot!_ Which is incredible! Because he had no idea that there were any robots other than Mettaton in the Underground!

"Oh my god," Papyrus says, with a bubble of panic swelling inside his ribs, because the robot doesn't look okay, but Papyrus would like to make them okay, except he doesn't know how to go about doing that because he doesn't know anything about _robots._

"U-um, okay, don't worry, I'm going to help you," he says, to no one in particular because the robot doesn't seem to be conscious, and he takes off one mitten and layers it over his other mitten so he can have a better grip when he wraps one set of fingers around the robot's wrist and pulls; they're heavy, _unbelievably_ heavy, but Papyrus _is_ a pretty strong guy, if he does say so himself. Plus, the snow eliminates any friction that might have gotten in his way.

Papyrus drags the robot into his house, struggling to get the odd, wing-like shoulder blades past the doorway, and he lets go of them on the carpet in the living room, mind churning to try and figure out what to do next.

He.

Has absolutely no idea.

Papyrus glances around the room, thinking that maybe he will find something that will inspire an idea in him, and his gaze catches on the TV and lingers there.

…A television is a machine. A robot is a machine. There has to be some sort of correlation there. And his TV functions fine, so if he can figure out what _makes_ the TV function fine, and he just does that to the robot, it'll be great, right? Televisions and robots are practically the same thing.

He starts simple: a TV needs a source of electricity to even turn on at all. A plug in a socket, most of the time. In fact, that's...He remembers that once, while watching aforementioned television, Mettaton had said that he had had to cancel the rest of the show because his battery was running low, and it would be a tragedy if he were to pass out on live television. That could very well be what's happened here, if all robots are similar in this way.

So...maybe if he...takes the plug out of the TV, and plugs it into the monster currently residing on his living room floor?

He walks behind the television set, tracks down which of the cords is the one that's plugged into the wall, and yanks it out, disentangling it from the other wires before kneeling down to the robot with the cord gripped in one hand.

"Okay, yes, I can do this," he says, glancing over the monster's unconscious body in search of something like a charging port; his gaze inevitably snags on a slot in the back of the robot's neck. A slot that does, of course, look oddly identical to one end of the cord in his hand.

Papyrus glances back and forth between the two. And he holds the cord to the outlet and he edges it inside.

Lights on the underside of the odd shoulder blades flicker on, one by one. There's the soft _whir_ like a computer powering on. Irises light up - literally light up, like the bulbs of hot pink fairy lights.

The robot puts a hand to the back of their neck, and they look at him.

* * *

 

 

He's alive. He's alive and he has no idea where the hell he is.

There's a skeleton hovering above him, the tops of his eye sockets indented to imitate an expression of concern that the lack of eyebrows aren't giving him. "Oh, good!" he says. "I'm so glad that worked!"

"Yes, I…" Mettaton frowns and runs his finger along the cord in the back of his neck. "Would you mind if I asked where I was?"

"Not at all!" the skeleton replies. "You, my dear new friend, are in the humble abode of yours truly."

"I see," Mettaton says. "And you're the one who charged me back up?"

"I am indeed."

"Oh. Thank you for that, then, darling."

"But of course!"

Mettaton sits up and scans his surroundings; it's a simple house, from what he can see, but large enough so it's nothing to sneeze at, either. And as he does this something in his head is nourished with electricity, and with it refills the memories, the past couple of hours, the fear and the urgency and the -

Mettaton flies to his feet. "It's you," he says. "It's - it's you who they spared, it's - what's your name, sweetheart?"

The skeleton stands up and strikes a grandiose pose, his tattered cape flowing behind him in some unknown wind. "I," he says, voice accented, suddenly, with class and pride, "am The Great Papyrus." The cape stops fluttering. "Papyrus works too though, since I'm aware that my full name is quite the mouthful."

"Mm. Papyrus, then, dear, I need -"

"What's yours?"

Mettaton blinks at him. "What?"

"Your name."

"My...name." He _could_ reveal his true name, but then, A) this skeleton is a vital part of his plan, and he doesn't want him passing out on him when he realizes that he's in the presence of a star as blinding as himself, and B) he wants to see the look of surprise and awe on his face when they find a way (and they _will_ find a way) to switch Mettaton back to his classic, celebrity form.

"My name is - is classified. It's very important, very secret," Mettaton says. "I'll tell you it, though, if you help me figure something out."

Flakes of excited, glittery blue flame spark up from inside Papyrus' eye sockets. "Oh, I'm very good at figuring things out!" he says. "Hit me with your best shot. I _assure_ you that I will astound you with my puzzle-solving skills."

"Oh, how perfect," Mettaton says. He shifts so his back is turned to Papyrus. "Do you see this switch, set in my back?"

"Yes."

"Well, I need it to _not_ be set in my back, but my fingers are too big to pull it out. If you could -"

He stops when Papyrus takes in his words with a hand stroking his chin, a hand that sheds its mitten as he approaches Mettaton's back and, all very swiftly, slides the thin, bony fingers in between the casing of his back and the switch, grips the switch in between the two, and pulls it up with a _click_ that Mettaton gasps at.

"What did I tell you?" Papyrus proclaims proudly, putting his mitten back on. "I'm a world-renowned problem solver."

Mettaton shivers. Then thrusts his retractable arm further out of its socket, finds the switch, clicks it into the place he wants it to be.

He watches, with some amusement, as Papyrus' face slackens in awe, as Mettaton's body shrinks in on itself, folding and retracting like a collapsible table; the reverse of his transformation from a few hours prior, not as flashy but visually engaging nonetheless. He spins around a few times on one wheel, holds out his arms with a flourish, and a shower of confetti (of an unknown source) streams over him.

Papyrus claps his hand over his mouth. "Oh. My god. You - you're -"

Mettaton bows.

"You're _Mettaton!"_ Papyrus shrieks. " _The_ Mettaton!"

Mettaton holds out a hand that Papyrus grabs and shakes so violently that Mettaton's arm takes on the shape of several wavelengths. "Always pleased to meet a fan," Mettaton says, flashing him the ;) emoticon on his display screen.

"Oh, I know everything about you - I - I've watched all your TV shows and movies and -" He stops, suddenly. "Why are you here, in Snowdin? And why did you look like." He narrows his eye sockets. "Like _that._ "

Mettaton sobers up a bit. Right. The whole issue with the murderous - the - _something._

"I need your help."

" _My_ help?" Papyrus asks elatedly.

"Mhmm," Mettaton says, taking the cord that's plugged into his back and yanking it out because sure, he isn't fully charged yet, but this form is so good at conserving energy that it'll be enough until he gets back to Alphys' lab, where he can get another charger; hopefully she'll be back by then.

"Help with what?" Papyrus says.

Mettaton squares his shoulders (he doesn't even really have shoulders, but he does the best he can) and says, "This town, Papyrus. You realize why it's empty, yes?"

"O-oh, yes! That! Is definitely a thing that I know!" His gloved hand uncomfortably rubs the back of the bones where his neck would be. "Everyone sort of, er, left. There must be a very exciting event that even I don't know about going on somewhere. And - and Undyne - she's just taking a vacation."

Mettaton can't tell if Papyrus honestly believes the words he's saying. "Why are you still here, then?" he asks.

"That's because my brother left to go somewhere as well. I would follow everyone else to the exciting event, but I don't want him to come home and have me not be here. He needs me. We're very close."

_Bingo._

"I can help you with that," Mettaton says, almost desperately.

"I thought _I_ was the one helping _you._ "

"Well - it's - it can be a symbiotic relationship, see? You help me with something I need to do. In return, I will help you find your brother. I know where he is." He has absolutely no idea where Papyrus' brother is.

Another volcano of blue sparks, from within Papyrus' skull. "You do?"

"But of course; I'm Mettaton, I know everything."

Papyrus nods. "That makes sense," he says. "This sounds like a good plan to me. What is it that you need my help with?"

"You and I," Mettaton says, discreetly extending his arm until it hits the dimmer switch behind him so the lights fade out dramatically, "are going to capture a human."

Human- _ish,_ at least.


	3. Chapter 3

They'd stopped when they'd come across a house, two houses, actually, side-by-side, each bent away from each other at awkward angles, one blue, the other the reddish color of clay.

Papyrus doesn't think much of it at first, but when he reaches the end of the room, Mettaton is no longer by his side.

"What are you doing?" he asks. Mettaton has braked in front of the two houses. His arms are crossed, and one set of fingers drums rhythmically against the metal plating on his side.

"You go on," he says. "I'll catch up with you."

"I couldn't possibly," Papyrus replies. "We should stick together, if we are to maximize our true potential."

"Potential for what?"

"I don't know! That's the beautiful thing about it."

Mettaton turns to him, and the red pixels on his display screen break down so a yellowish color can rise to them. "Alright," he says. His voice is quiet in a way Papyrus finds odd, out of character, and the sound quality has taken a nosedive. "Alright. Let's keep going."

They walk (er, roll, in Mettaton's case) through the Waterfall, and Papyrus takes care to ensure that Mettaton never strays too close to the water; uncharged robots he can manage, apparently, but he isn't sure how well he'd do with a short-circuited one. Idle chat fuels them along; blue-electric flowers absorb bits and pieces and whisper them back, surrounding the two with their own intonations _("I'm very talented, I assure you, but the royal guard has extremely high standards that even I, The Great Papyrus, must train even further to achieve." "Ah; humble beginnings. I've been there." "Really? You?")_ that become choppier as time passes, as the conversation twists faster, more passionate, more vulnerable, with a sort of privacy too quiet for the flowers to keep up with entirely.

_("Undyne -"_

" _Alphys -"_

" _Sans -"_

" _Napstablook -"_

" _Home -"_

" _Loneliness,"_

" _Loneliness indeed.")_

"You should just tell them," Papyrus says, and the flowers encurl the words in their petals and parrot back, tell them, tell them. "I cannot even begin to imagine what that must be like, withholding such a valuable secret. How it must eat away at you, like acid to metal!"

Mettaton's speaker barks a sound, somewhere between a laugh and a vocal representation of disdain. "If it were truly like acid to metal, there would be nothing left of me, at this point," he says. "I can tell Napstablook that I'm the cousin who abandoned them so many years ago about as much as you can admit to Sans that your show of copious self-esteem is only just that."

"Hey, I wouldn't say it's _all_ a show," Papyrus huffs -

"Oh, no, of course it's not," Mettaton says, with a sharp, digitalized giggle. "You regard yourself highly, very highly, but not quite up to the standard you'd like people to see. So, what to do with those gaps between how great you think you are and how great you want other people to think you think you are?" He tosses the back of his hand above his display screen like there's a forehead there. _"Lights, camera, action!"_

"Hm," Papyrus says, narrowing his eye sockets at the floor. "I get the distinct feeling that you aren't entirely talking just me there."

"That would be because I wasn't."

Papyrus likes him. He really, really likes him, beyond the fact that he's walking beside the idol he's always adored; Mettaton is great. Fantastic. He is great because Papyrus does not quite know what it is about him but he feels open with him; he feels relatable, for once! Like someone _relates_ to him! That there is someone else out there who is a paradox of a monster just like him, someone who has glittering amounts of self-esteem and hoarded mobs of self-depreciation and loneliness to go along with them, someone who uses over-compensation as a greatest weapon!

Mettaton is great. Now Papyrus is taking extra _extra_ care to ensure that he doesn't stray too close to the water (except, of course, with the parts where wading through water is necessary to proceed; Papyrus just carries him over those. It is uncomfortable and strenuous for both parties involved, and Papyrus is most definitely not aching from his phalanges up to his clavicle by the time they're through because he is a strong dude and strong dudes have absolutely no problem with carrying heavy robots across what is, to them, pits of watery death). (Mettaton thanks him profusely for it, through, and the ego inflation makes it worth it.)

They make it to the cave that tunnels into Hotland, its mouth open and jagged like the maw of a wild animal; ragged spikes of rock silhouette against the red-orange atmosphere behind them, the columns of steam, the distant but potent scent of burnt rubber and smoke.

"I don't _like_ Hotland," Papyrus says, as he and Mettaton approach the gaping orifice. "It's too..."

He stops when a breeze wisps through the rock bridge they're on, and there's a sound like rustling leaves or silk. Out of curiosity, he looks down.

He looks down, and.

There is dust.

Everywhere.

Mettaton makes a startled, non-monster, all-machine noise, and he rolls back an inch or so. Papyrus doesn't move.

"Wow!" he says, focused on the blanket of macabre snow that carpets the bridge, the entrance of the tunnel; it glimmers, faintly, like the iridescence of a fish's scales. "This place needs some serious cleaning up, if I might make such a comment!" He'd seen some dusted patches of land while journeying through the Waterfall and had conveniently forgotten how to think when he came across them. This is hard to ignore. It sprawls across their perimeter, and it's odd, it - the powder isn't fine and pristine, it's clumped together, smoothed over in some places like glass. Like it's molten.

"Papyrus..." Mettaton says.

"I'm serious!" Papyrus says. "Quite frankly, I'm offended by the low amount of maintenance here. If Undyne were here, she would be offended, too! Offended by how nobody is willing to step up to the plate and take care of her dwelling while she's off doing important royal guard vacation things."

"Papyrus," Mettaton says, again.

"If - if Undyne were here." Papyrus kneels down, presses one mitten to the dust, holds his gloved hand up to his face and twists it so the powder catches the light in different angles. "This isn't the sort of vacation I had thought she had taken."

Mettaton has noticed that Papyrus very nearly belts everything he says. Those words are quiet.

"I'm sorry," he says.

Papyrus rises abruptly. "Well!" he says. "It's of no matter to me! This - this doesn't mean that I -" He takes a moment to scoop up some of the dust from the floor, deposit it into one too-large boot, grin as wide as ever. "This does not mean that I should give up. I cannot give up. Just because Undyne's gone doesn't mean that I can't still become a member of the royal guard. And it certainly doesn't mean that I've lost my only true and good friend of whom I loved so dearly; I have _tons_ of friends." He takes another handful, dusts his mittens with it, takes another handful and stores it in his other boot.

"Do you see, now?" Mettaton says, after he's let Papyrus have his episode of mental decay for a good few moments and prepared what he wants to say. "Do you see why I need your help? The creature that's done this to your friend. The one that's going to destroy everything _I've_ ever dreamed of. You and I, we can put an end to it before they do any more damage." He likes Papyrus; really, he does, he's become very fond of him in the short time that he's known him, but he can't afford to let that get in the way of the big picture.

Papyrus laughs, and he wipes something like cyan-blue gel from the corner of his eye sockets where his tear ducts would be. "Now, normally, I am a glass-half-full kind of guy," he says, casual wording not _quite_ coinciding with the strain on his voice, "but this is a tragedy of the most vulgarly ostentatious kind. I fail to see how it could be undone." His bones are quaking, and his jaw twitches and clenches every now and then.

"It can't be undone; there's nothing I can do there," Mettaton replies. If he could, he would. He's heard of Undyne. Alphys probably isn't doing too well right now; thinking back, that's probably why he couldn't get into the lab. He crosses his arms. "There's only one solid way to end it."

Belatedly, Papyrus' face settles into something more grief-stricken; it makes him look younger and older all at once; a simple, innocent sorrow blended into his angular facial features. "But...that makes us no better than them, doesn't it?"

"Papyrus, please," Mettaton says, and he's swiftly losing his inhibition and he's desperate, now, "please, you have to help me kill them, we can take their soul, prevent them from -"

"Even the worst people can change," Papyrus says, and it sounds like a line Mettaton could have ripped right from one of Alphys' stupid cartoons but the way Papyrus presents it, so proudly and so adamantly, makes a deep, uncomfortable cold settle into his machinery. "Let us capture them, as you said. But we shall not kill them. They are a living, breathing - er, I don't know if you breathe, but you get the point - creature just like you and I. They have good inside them just like anyone else. I - I believe in them. We can sway them, if we show them enough good, I am _sure_ of it!"

God, Mettaton had picked up that he was naive, but this - this just -

He suddenly doesn't have the heart to express how much, exactly, he wants to gorily tear the soul from the child's chest and leave them there. "Alright," he says, gentle in a way he hadn't meant but he's baked in the intensity of saccharine purity rolling off Papyrus in waves and there it is, "alright. We can give this redemption a shot. No killing necessary." The unrealisticness of the statement burns.

Papyrus nods, very seriously, and the wind howls, and Undyne's dust swirls in a sparkling cyclone around his feet. He heads into the tunnel.

Mettaton follows him in.

* * *

 

 

They come to a stop and rest in the room at the end of the Core, where they'd met Mettaton the last time. He isn't here, and they haven't seen him since. It doesn't really matter right now. They're sure they'll hear from him again before this run is through.

Chara idly draws a flower with their index finger in the ash on the floor. It smells like glitter glue and barbecued flesh. Would probably make a nice candle. "Well, Frisk?" they say. "We're almost done here. What should we do afterwards?"

 _Chara,_ Frisk says, quietly. _Isn't it getting boring? Resetting a lot and meeting and killing the same people time after time after time?_

Chara scowls and rubs the heel of their hand through the char mark, obliterating the flower. "No. Nice try, though."

 _What are you trying to_ do?

Chara grits their teeth together, takes out the knife, starts scraping at the plaster of ashes, brushing aside the flakes of gray-black as they come away. "What?" they say, and they laugh, bitter, burnt. "It's - it's just fun, Frisk. I'm just having fun."

 _It's not fun,_ Frisk says, stubbornly. _You don't think it is, either._

"Nah, it's definitely fun. The most fun I've ever had, I think." Fun, driving the plastic into your mother's chest, the taste of cinnamon-butterscotch clinging to the back of your throat, and the way your brain had wanted to burst open at the seams like a water balloon and splurt blood and skull viscera everywhere because the power feels so good and killing feels so good and you're drunk on it and the guilt is too much, but god, you deserve it, you're disgusting you're disgusting you and your brother are dead and it's all your fault and you did it on _purpose_ you sick fuck you killed him, just so you could feel their blood pulsing hot and sticky on your hands - paws - _his_ paws and he was screaming in your head to stop but you were made for this, to slaughter, to die, to tear the world apart like the fucking vermin that everything in it is,

 _Stop that,_ Frisk says, and Chara laughs, eyes flaring as they tangle five fingers into their hair. Frisk knows it's true. They know it's true and Chara can feel it. If Frisk is nice to them, it's because they're hoping to get Chara to - to exorcise themself or something, they don't fucking know. Empty pity charged by an underlying fear and an underlying goal to win back their body and befriend everyone like they're in some nauseating children's cartoon.

It'd been far, far different, the first time they did the no mercy route. They'd _really_ been a demon then; there were no wavelengths of sympathy and hope that Frisk's presence was emitting inside them, only fear, disgust, the emotions of nightmares. Chara awoke inside the child - a senseless, soulless force, passive at first and then it got the taste of power, the taste of that number going up and then it was _killkillkillkillkill_ and the dust caked on their hands and the screams lancing through their eardrums like melodies and Frisk's horrified, desperate attempts at trying to convince them out of it and

And then they reached the end. And Chara, with this rich, potent reservoir of determination that they'd borrowed at their fingertips, the strength they'd absorbed from every kill, meant to destroy this godforsaken world and everything that existed in it _finally._

And it backfired. Horrifically.

Did they destroy the world? Oh, sure, definitely; Chara's demonic essence reaching a climax as their eyes bled and they couldn't stop laughing and the world, its existence crumbled around them like one of Mom - one of Toriel's pie crusts and it was beautiful _oh god it was so beautiful_ living in the abyss without humanity and without stupid things like guilt and without _existing_ and then.

Frisk came back.

It should have been impossible. Everything was destroyed.

But there it was, this pulsating, glowing red jewel in the void. It'd opened the world back up. Slipped through the cracks somehow. Chara didn't want it there.

 **You came back,** they said.

Frisk's soul scintillated fiercely with light, blazing from the inside. Something crept into the corners of the nothingness - love, warmth, hope. Most of all DETERMINATION.

And the world, it was starting to fade back into existence.

This wasn't the way it was supposed to go.

And so Chara: **I can bring it back. The world. I can feel that you want it back.**

_How?_

**You will give me your soul.**

And so Frisk did, to restore everything.

And here Chara had been thinking that they could breeze through and kill everyone again, destroy Frisk's soul at the end now that they owned it so it wouldn't be a nuisance anymore, enjoy a world where everyone no longer exists and it's just them, Chara.

But when they awoke in Frisk's body on the flower bed, it was immediately noted that something was off.

They felt, different. Than they had in the previous run. Every cavity in their body was still injected to the brim with hatred, embitterment, the perverse joy they still to this day gain from seeing that dying flash of shock on a victim's face.

The difference was this: they could not feel before. Those things, while present, were numb, demonic, not true to their heart because they didn't _have_ one.

And now? A glimmer of guilt when they'd knelt down in Toriel's dust. A threat of tears when they'd slashed off Papyrus' head and he had told them he still believed in them despite everything. Something regretful, disturbed, when Sans limped away with ketchup leaking grossly from his rib cage, wasting his last few words on his dead brother. And Flowey - just - _fuck._ They should have seen that one coming. He sounds like him, sometimes.

That's, ha, what? Three times, at that point, that they'd killed him? Ha.  _Ha._ You must really hate him, Chara.

The demonic reincarnation of themself was still thriving alive and well, mingled into the questionable morals and violent impulses they'd had naturally, even while alive, and made them continue to kill and kill and kill and scream and cry and laugh while doing it; certainly not human, but not entirely demon anymore, either.

They had not taken Frisk's soul. They were sharing it.

 _It's all right,_ Frisk says. _I kind of like you a lot better like this anyway._

Chara laughs sourly at them.

And so here they are, trapped in this vicious cycle of Chara the human not being able to trump Chara the demon so the two essences dance together like they're in some horror-genre musical and so they reset, and reset, and reset, wanting to see what happens with some gruesome curiosity if you kill him but not her, her but not them.

And Frisk puts up a brave front, trying to coax the demonic reincarnation out and away so it's just Chara again - god, what would that even do, Chara's been fucked up all along, alive or not - but at this point they just want it all to end.

And Chara, three-quarters investing themself into the excitement and adrenaline that comes along with the violence, one-quarter wanting to cry, kind of wants it to end, too.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> suicide tw

_I don't need to hurt anyone,_ Frisk told themself as they inched through the Ruins, the stick clutched in their hand like it was their life support. _I don't need to hurt anyone, I don't need to hurt anyone._

 _But will anyone hurt_ me?

There was something nested inside them, and it stirred, prodded curiously at Frisk's insides with a detached frostiness that made Frisk choke on their next breath at the unfamiliarity of it. It was a something that had unfurled within them when they had woken up on the golden flowers and it had yawned like it was its own living, breathing thing, shot serpentines of ice that sank into them like a thousand tiny grappling hooks, and it buried itself inside them as if it belonged there. Frisk had woken up with a pain that resonated in everything from guts to bone marrow, and the copper tang of blood stung every breath as an aftertaste. Their heart rate was accelerated, and this thing that was suddenly slinking just underneath their skin was certainly not helping.

They'd learned to stop questioning things after a golden flower morphed its face into the caricature of nightmares and attempted to knife bullets into their soul. Their glistening, pulsing soul, heart-shaped, emerging from their physical body and hovering in front of them. That was new, too.

The presence was quiet. Passive. It made no comment on anything, never did anything to reveal itself as the person Frisk would later find out that it was. Maybe, it would skyrocket shrilly against their heartbeat whenever Frisk laid eyes on Toriel, or it would coil up hotly in the pit of Frisk's stomach when they saw the flower bed, but besides that, it was just sort of. There.

Frisk squeezed the stick in their hand and continued moving.

Still fearful, still on-edge.

It was why, when they heard wet footsteps, when something approached them, they, in a startled, thoughtless action, whirled around, propelled their hands outward for the illusion of self-defense. Their hands were thrust upon greasy, silky, frog-like skin. Skin that deteriorated under their palms and fell to the violet floor like a fine snow, all so suddenly, all at once.

Frisk stood there for a moment, a stilled, plastic mannequin, examined the dust with wide, frightened eyes. They didn't know anything about monsters. This was all so new to them, and, oh, they were so confused, determined not to hurt anyone but unnerved and trepidated nonetheless.

Either way, vaporizing into dust probably wasn't a sure-fire signification of health for these monsters.

 _What,_ they thought, _what, no, I - I didn't mean to -_

Tears sprung to their eyes. A sheer panic frothed in their blood. Something went up inside them, evolved, increased.

_Toriel told you that you didn't need to hurt anyone. Now look at what you've done. You've already killed one. You're no better than the cruel humans in the legends._

Frisk fell to their knees before the dust and the tears spilled over their lower eyelids and they just killed someone and _oh they just killed someone I didn't mean to I don't want to hurt anyone please please I'm sorry I don't know what's going on I don't understand anything here_ and

The force that had made its home inside them fizzed, twisted, took the image seared into Frisk's brain of the froggit disintegrating before them, took the feeling like a number spiking up, and it used those things to change itself into something it wasn't before. And it grabbed Frisk by the inside of their throat, rendering them temporarily breathless, and Frisk shivered violently and hugged themself, hair falling in their eyes as the presence clawed deeper into their flesh, as it expanded inside them, a great, black spiderweb, foaming and sparkling and bubbling like a pit of tar that filled itself up in every body cavity Frisk had, and - and they were so scared they were so scared they were _so scared please just get me out of here -_

And that was it. They got out of there. Woke up again with a broken gasp on the bed of flowers.

They were awake for a grand total of, maybe, three seconds. Until they were still breathing but the breaths weren't their own. They tried to move, tried to shift to the side and stand up, but they could not, motor controls involuntarily surrendered.

 **Oh.** A thought that wasn't their own. An action that wasn't their own: their hand was brought up to their face, examined.  **Oh,** _ **this**_ **is interesting.**

* * *

 

 

 

Dust.

They're in Alphys' lab.

Mettaton, in the end, had simply ended up kicking the doors in, but of course he had had to switch into EX mode in order to do that, which of course meant that he first spent a full five minutes trying on different poses and effervescing about _"Oh Papyrus I've been waiting for this body before my name was even Mettaton at all and oh my god this is all I ever could have asked for and then some and it's just so gorgeous isn't it I'm just so gorgeous look at me and"_ while Papyrus looked on enthusiastically and clapped at appropriate intervals (also enthusiastically).

And then they got inside. And they _did_ find Alphys.

Mettaton kneels down in front of her, a note that had been left on the cluttered desk held in his hand.

_Mettaton,_

_If you're reading this, I guess that means you're still alive. That's great! Good job! Um. I wasn't quite as strong, haha. I know you're probably pretty mad at me - and that's fine, I wasn't even fully finished with your body, I didn't do like half the things I promised you that I would - but I give up. I'm sorry. I'm not strong enough and I'm sorry._

_When I watched Undyne melt, it was too much. She was, to me, so much. And they killed her. She was so much of what was keeping me alive. I love her so, so much, Mettaton. Did you know that I would have jumped into that abyss all that time ago if she hadn't approached me? I think I've told you that story._

_When I watched her melt, it struck me, how stupidly weak I am. I couldn't help her. I watched it all, Mettaton, right on this screen. Right on this screen! And I couldn't help her, I couldn't help the amalgamates, I couldn't help a single thing that I cared about, I couldn't even help myself. I'm an awful person, Mettaton, and the enormity of that truth kinda struck me all at once, I guess. I'm weak and I'm sick of myself. I'm sick and tired of carrying this guilt and this self-loathing around with me. You can't know how this feels._

_I'm sorry if this sounds kind of rushed and disorganized. My thoughts are a little cluttered right now, and I'm not at my most coherent. And I have a few other things that I still need to do. I just figured that even if we've sort of drifted apart, I guess, I owe you an explanation for my disappearance._

_They were probably going to kill me anyway. They don't show any sign of stopping._

_I'm sorry._

_-Alphys_

Mettaton reads it again, and then re-reads it, and then re-reads it again. Wordlessly, he stands up and sets the note back on the desk. And, wordlessly, Papyrus approaches him and takes off his shoes, turns them upside-down so the phosphorescent powder drizzles to the floor, where it overlays and intermingles with the pile of dust that's already there.

"One time," he says, "on one fine, particularly lovesick day, Undyne told me that if she ever dies, she wants to be scattered all across the laboratory's floor so she can spend time with Alphys forever, even if it means getting stepped on all the time which is kind of gross and weird. She meant it jokingly, of course, but it was as close to a dying wish as I had." He pats the boots so the final remnants of dust come away. "This may not be the floor, but I am sure that this is what she would have wanted instead, if given the choice."

Mettaton stares at the desk, metallic eye vacant, the electric light in them hushed. "This is my fault," he says.

"What?" Papyrus says, startled.

"My _function_ is to kill humans, and if I had just done that instead of spending my time being cruel to her and glitzing around on my own, they - they never would have killed Undyne, and Alphys never would have had this breakdown, and -"

"You stop that right now," Papyrus says, with rigidity etched in his sharp features. "This is _not_ your fault."

Mettaton rocks back and forth on his heels and doesn't look convinced.

"This is the fault of the human. Nothing else. No one else. You had nothing to do with her -"

"I never even got to tell her," Mettaton says. "I always carried this guilt around with me - I believed we discussed this, you and I. I could have been such a better friend to her. I never took the initiative to do anything about it.

"And you know what? It wasn't even the human. Sure, maybe, that set it off. But it was her; she was always like this, always anxious and self-loathing. And I knew all about that and I didn't _do_ anything."

"Selfishness, guilt, and the lack of motivation to do anything about it," Papyrus says, sadly in the pure, innocent way Papyrus seems to feel everything. "I know someone like that."

Mettaton, if not a little theatrically, side-steps away from the pile of dust and begins walking deeper into the lab. "Well, it's as I said," he says. "We have no time to waste here. The show must go on." Papyrus watches him look at the anime figurine he'd taken from the desktop and slip it into a storage compartment in his thigh. Papyrus doesn't know where the note has gone, but it isn't on the table anymore.

"It is more than okay if you'd like to take a break," Papyrus says. "Why don't we do that?"

"I don't need to mourn," Mettaton says, reading him, with a poker face that Papyrus is rather impressed by. He forgets, most of the time, that Mettaton's body is artificial and synthetic, but he is reminded of this now. Mettaton has very easily slid into a mode of robotic detachment. "Let us continue. We don't have much time." He removes something from a cabinet - a portable battery, it looks like - and heads back Papyrus' way, towards the front doors.

And as he gets closer, Papyrus can imagine the pain he must be feeling, the pain that he himself has cultivated deep in his non-existent lungs, and thus he hugs him. Tries to, at least; it doesn't have all the signature comforts of a hug between the bone and metal and lack of body heat, but he does his best.

"Oh," Mettaton says. "What are you doing."

"I am ensconcing you in my comfort and support and fantastic friendship. Please be quiet and allow yourself to be ensconced. You are in need of this, and I cannot neglect that."

Mettaton accepts the hug. He needs it more than he knew, but he doesn't say anything.

"See, that was very nice, wasn't it?" Papyrus says, after he's pulled away. "Already, I can feel the bonds of friendship ever-tightening between us!"

There's something to be admired there, Mettaton will admit, with that evergreen optimism. "Oh, yes," he says, his voice flat in a way that he can't help. "I do believe a new friendship will be a wonderful new asset to my - well." He laughs dryly. "I suppose I don't have much of anything anymore, actually."

"Well, that's fine, because neither do I," says Papyrus brightly. "At least we have _each other._ "


	5. Chapter 5

They've done this a thousand times but the memories are muted in comparison to the reality of shoe soles pressed against sunset-stained tile, of breathing in the gilded air, of the symbols on the windows that make their heart warm and pump acid just by looking at - they wonder how sunlight can dye anything in a place that's never been touched by starshine, but the monsters' home also happens to be a place where snow can fall even with the Underground's inability to maintain a water cycle and flowers can grow without the photons from across the barrier that they need.

They sense Frisk inflate with several things, a water balloon swollen with too much water: awe, resignation, the plea to stop all this and reset and do it "right" so they won't have to see _him_ in _this_ context. They ignore them.

Sans, when he emerges, his figure a silhouette against the royal light that saturates the hallway, lacks the ominous ambiance he once upon a time put off, though he is in physicality no different; like a horror movie you've watched so many times that the jumpscares no longer affect your heartrate and the special effects don't seem special anymore. They doubt they'll scream as loud when the bones pierce their gut and they doubt they'll spend much time bathing in the river of triumph when they feel the _slash_ of the blade-on-bone rendezvous.

"Hey," he says. They're both long past the point of pretending that he doesn't know what's going on here. "I don't think either of us really have the energy for my monologue, so."

"Let's get this over with," Chara agrees.

A vestige of blue in one eye socket that kindles itself into a bulb of cyan-electric light, the context of that indefinite toothy grin twisting into something else, and the faint _pop!_ as Chara's soul oozes through the layers of skin and muscle on their chest and through the fabric of their sweater and then -

A cluster of bones hurtles towards them, and Chara ducks just before they have the chance to splinter into their soul.

* * *

 

 

"Wowie," Papyrus says, "we certainly have traveled quite a distance now! I think this calls for an honorary high five."

Mettaton claps his hand against Papyrus' proferred mitten, but his eyes don't leave the castle that looms before them: snow-blue caps and grandiose structures of stone and there's an aura it gives off, hot and golden and igneous, that reminds him of the backdrops to some of the more emotional scenes he's watched in Alphys' cartoons. 'Sunset,' he thinks the word is. "Can't disagree with you there, darling. May I ask, though: why are we here?"

"We're here to look for the human child, of course! Think about it, my dear pal: we've looked all over, and even so we are yet to deduce even a single trace of them. There are only a few more places they could be. And the sooner we find them, the sooner you help me find my brother, and the sooner everyone will be electrifyingly happy!" He says the last two words like he's grinding them out of a typewriter: stale and forced and old.

"I don't _know_ where your brother is," Mettaton responds, before he can stop himself, almost involuntarily, like a - ah, well, like a robot. A rusty, detached robot with no inhibition. Saying the words aloud relieve him of the radio static guilt that'd been matting his metal innards like cobwebs nonetheless. It makes him wonder if the words were really unintentional at all.

"What?"

"I - I don't -" Mettaton wrings his hands together briefly. Yes, okay: admitting that he's been lying to his new (only) friend this entire time? Horrific idea.

But he's already sort of dug his own grave here.

And he is so, so tired.

"I wasn't telling the truth," Mettaton says, "when I told you that I knew where your brother was, and that I would lead you to him if you helped me in return. I was desperate for the aid and I've never claimed to be a good person. Make of it what you will."

"Oh," is all Papyrus says at first. Mettaton preps himself for the onslaught of "You selfish, self-serving bastard" and "I can't believe I _trusted_ you with my friendship" but it never comes, and he can't really imagine Papyrus' voice saying any of those words anyway.

And then: "That's all right."

Mettaton's eye snaps to him.

"You are a troubled soul, my friend, that much has been made clear to me," and here Mettaton half-wants to roll his eye, half-wants to cry, "and while - while I cannot lie and say that I am not hurt by the fact that my friend has told me such a fib...I understand. Understanding is one of the core values of friendship, is it not? It is one of the principal building blocks! A pillar of bonding and trust!

"Lying...is not a good thing, and it is a thing that I would prefer that you do not do to me again maybe. But I think we can agree that we are both going through quite the rough patches in our lives, and, every once in a while, desperate times call for desperate measures."

"Yes," Mettaton says dazedly, because he's not sure what else he's supposed to say. He's never been in a situation where he's had to reply to something like that, because words like those have never been fed to him.

"We are - still friends, are we not?" Papyrus says.

"Of course," Mettaton replies instantly.

"Good." A strengthening of posture. "Excellent! I was almost but not quite worried that we weren't - oh my god. Mettaton. What is _that?"_

Papyrus is pointing to one of the orange-glow windows of the castle, and Mettaton follows the direction of the finger with his eye. There are two silhouettes, both small and humanoid. They're facing each other, unmoving. Something ascends from the figure on the right. It looks like - a stick? A bone, or something -

And then, suddenly, Papyrus is running.

" _Papyrus!"_ Mettaton calls out after him, and starts running as well - it doesn't take him long to catch up, what with his longer, sturdier legs.

"That's _him!_ " Papyrus yells, as they both barrel in through the front doors to the castle. "That's my brother! And the human is attacking him!"

"We -" Mettaton splutters. "We can't just waltz in here unannounced and join in on the fun like this! I may be good at improv, but this is a _little_ outside my realm of ability!"

"Mettaton," Papyrus says, as the two of them collapse into an elevator and Papyrus hastily punches a button, " _you_ want to find a way to rid the human of whatever's causing them to do this, and I wish to find my brother, were those not our two goals? And now, here they both are, right before our very eyes!"

The elevator opens again, and Papyrus goes running, running and shouting at a smaller skeleton in basketball shorts and at a child in a blue-and-purple sweater.

 _Out of the frying pan and into the fire,_ as they say.


End file.
